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Catching up With Founding Member, Diego

Last month, one of our staff members caught up with Diego Campagna – a founding member of WAIA who owned and operated Global Data Access Pty Ltd from 1994-1997 – one of Perth’s early Internet Service Providers (ISP). The company quickly expanded to Kalgoorlie, Karratha and Port Hedland and eventually merged with Starwon Internet. As an owner of a local ISP, Diego joined WAIA due to the heavy-handed regulation being proposed and subsequently exited the association as he moved away from the Internet industry.   

When talking about WA-IX and its contribution to Australia’s Internet, Diego spoke about how the Internet industry has become a lot harder to survive in due to more prominent players and how having an established IXP like WA-IX would have made a difference to his business. He reminisced about his ISP, which suffered significant income losses due to black hole routing by a larger ISP over a bandwidth dispute. Unfortunately, in the mid ’90s, legislation wasn’t reasonably equipped to keep up with some of the technology around, and his business suffered severely.   

These days, Diego is the Managing Director of Suburban Integration, a technology company specialising in audiovisual and security integration solutions travelling around WA doing what he is truly passionate about.   

Next Generation Members Portal

We are excited to announce that in a few months’ time, we will be launching our brand new member portal! This portal is designed to enhance the user experience by being easy and intuitive. We will do our best to keep you up to date with what’s happening, so keep an eye on our newsletter and social media channels.  

AusNOG 2021

What a great couple of days of learning, knowledge sharing and networking! With session topics ranging from RPKI to DDoS to regulation, the conference had something for everyone. Narelle’s session – Regulation, Schmegulation – began with the changing digital landscape and focused on four regulatory themes: security, privacy and data rights, NBN and online safety. She covered the concerns of disproportionate obligations and costs for industry, lack of oversight over government powers, clarity and guidance and more and finished with our election wish list.   

Our booth was very popular this year, too! With the spin to win, popcorn and fairy floss cart, and an abundance of swag, we had many visitors and were so happy to see lots of IAA hoodies in the conference room. If you received some swag from us, please feel free to share a photo of it in use and send it to events@internet.asn.au   

We are all looking forward to AusNOG 2022; we hope to see you all again in Melbourne in September. 

Welcome, Sabrina!

Sabrina Chang-Rozario joined our Admin Team earlier this month as our new Administrative Assistant. She will be assisting the Admin Team with various tasks including event organisation and has taken over our wonderful Tanzia’s role as the Executive Assistant to Narelle. Coming to us with over 15 years of international not-for-profit experience in stakeholder relations, program and event management, and relationship building, she is already an asset to our team.   

In her spare time, Sabrina enjoys Pilates and yoga, dabbling in photography, reading the classics to her children and travelling – Covid dependent at the moment, unfortunately!   

Parliament Hears About our Member Concerns

On Wednesday 16th March, Narelle and Sophia represented our association at the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security hearing that comprised several panels of stakeholders affected by the proposed bill. This hearing allowed industry representatives to provide feedback and raise concerns about the proposed federal government’s critical infrastructure cybersecurity obligations. This includes laws that could require organisations to install third-party software to gather information from their systems in the name of national security and report them to the government when the government deems them technically incapable of providing such systems information.  

During the hearing, Narelle did a fantastic job representing member interests. She explained that technical systems go through a number of upgrades and revisions and that capabilities change, meaning that any requirement to install software on behalf of Home Affairs needs careful and ongoing security and interoperability testing. She further raised the concern that the legislation is unclear, very complex and very difficult to work through and raised a number of specific concerns about the data this software could capture. She expressed that we need to trust in the type of software that goes onto our systems and that we must be able to read the code, assess the code, test the code, and check interoperability and security before it is installed and at any time it is installed.   

The hearing was an excellent opportunity to hear the different perspectives of various stakeholders. We hope the Parliamentary Joint Committee was able to gain enough industry insight for its review so that the inquiry can assist in constructing a Bill that is measured, effective and will improve our national security. If you would like to know more about the contents of the hearing, the transcript is available for download. So far, it seems the PJCIS has taken some of our views on board, so we live in hope the legislation will improve. 

Catching up With Founding Member, Rod Bland

In the spirit of celebration of WA-IX’s 25 years, one of our staff caught up with founding member Rod Bland. Now a Digital Marketing Consultant helping people grow their online businesses, he recalls joining WAIA as a founding member during the initial meeting at DIALix and some of the conversations about the construction of our very first IX.   

Starting as a customer services representative for Panther Computers, Rod’s founding membership was based on his casual interest in the Internet. He continued his membership for the next three years while working for PSINet and gradually moved on into different roles. Over 26 years, he went from systems administration to owning his own business – RamCity – to now running a vibrant consultancy business.  

Rod recalled conversations with numerous individuals, including Mark Hickey and Adrian Chadd, a young, highly intelligent young man who, at the age of 15, helped set up the BGP routing protocols on the IX. According to Rod, you could count the number of ISPs in Perth on one hand at that time, and they were being charged the earth for their previous services!  

Although he was not directly involved in the set-up of WA-IX, he contributed to the administrative duties of WAIA, and thanks to the contributions of founding members like him, we now operate the longest running, most efficient and reliable network of Internet Exchanges in Australia.    

Meet the new Members of our PPAP

We are extremely pleased to announce and welcome the approved members of our new Public Policy Advisory Panel! We are very fortunate to have a diverse range of professionals coming from all sorts of different backgrounds including small-medium regional CSPs, international policy, government bodies and large CSPs. 

Meet the members:  

Eric Ericson
Eric brings extensive experience in the telco sector, and in his current role as the Regulatory Affairs Advisor at Aussie Broadband Ltd, he is actively involved in engaging with regulators in this space.   

Pablo Hinojosa
Pablo has had a long history working in the development of policies and frameworks for the Internet in his day job with APNIC. In particular, he brings a regional (Asia-Pacific) and broader international perspective on internet policy.  

Holly Raiche
Holly brings a thorough knowledge of the legal and policy framework for the telco sector, having had extensive experience working in advocacy across the sector. Holly continues to teach communications law at university and sits on numerous ICANN and other policy panels.  

Naomi Wolfe
Naomi comes with experience working in both the public and private sectors. Having previously worked for the Australian Government in various policy and enforcement roles. Naomi is now at Cloud Earth Pty Ltd where she is the Assistant Director.   

Andrew Yager
Andrew’s background consists of many years in policy review and development in the telco sector. He currently works at Real World Technology Solutions where he drives most of their policy reviews and government submissions.  

We would like to say a big ‘thank you’ to all of our new panellists for their time and effort, and look forward to their inputs into our policy development. 

IAASysters@AusNOG

Last year, we launched our IAASysters@AusNOG Program.  Based on the international systers.org and systers@IETF programs, this program helps to support and enable women to access the valuable technical content and business networking opportunities that come from the Australian Network Operators Group (AusNOG) conference.  

Sponsored attendees will receive: 

  • Economy airfares to Sydney and three nights accommodation for interstate participants 
  • Admission to the AusNOG conference (April 6 and 7) – sponsored by AusNOG 
  • Admission to the IAASysters@AusNOG workshop (April 5) 
  • A one-year complimentary Professional membership to IAA – subject to Board approval. 

An essential part of our program is the IAASysters@AusNOG workshop. This is a one-day event; offering targeted technical and presentation skills training in addition to a career planning session delivered by industry professionals, designed to help you advance your career. 

Whether you are at the beginning of your career, yet to begin or starting again, the IAASysters@AusNOG program offers a variety of opportunities designed to boost your knowledge, skills, and confidence. 

Details for the IAASysters@AusNOG workshop: 

Date: Tuesday, 5 April 2022
Time: 9:00am AEST – 5:00pm AEST
Location: The Fullerton Hotel, Sydney 

This program is proudly sponsored by AusNOG and Amazon Web Services, and we would like to express our appreciation of their support. 

For more information, please visit the IAASysters@AusNOG information page on our website. 

Program Sponsors

The IAASysters@AusNOG Program is proudly brought to you with the help of our sponsors.

UTS Researcher Seeks Participants for Study into Industry Engagement in Co-regulatory Rule-making

Dr Karen Lee, in the UTS Faculty of Law, is undertaking research into the ways service providers engage when codes of practice are drafted; and why industry participants choose to engage or disengage in code development.   

Using the development of the Telecommunications Consumer Protections Code (C628: 2019) as a case study, the research seeks to identify the consultation mechanisms used; the difficulties encountered; the barriers to participation that industry participants of all sizes and business types might experience; the effect these mechanisms and barriers have on the code development process, and measures that might be taken to improve industry rule-making activities.  

To schedule an interview with Dr Lee or for further information about the project (UTS ETH21-6356), please contact her at karen.lee@uts.edu.au.   

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